and teacher for 24 years...

Welcome to De-Commissioned, a place for former members of the Great Commission movement (aka GCM, GCC, GCAC, GCI, the Blitz) to discuss problems they've experienced in the association's practices and theology.

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[blonde]

Mark Darling: from http://www.rockthechurch.com/main/pastor_bios

Mark Darling has been a pastor, leader, church planter, conference speaker, counselor, and teacher for 24 years. He was a co-founder of Evergreen Church, The Rock and The Urban Refuge. He not only has helped open the door for others to discover and serve Christ, but he is also known as an influential, motivating, and dynamic speaker. His passion is to reach as many un-churched individuals as possible from any age group or culture. His mission is to make Christ attractive to the world so that the Christian would want to love and follow Christ and so that the non-Christian would want to know and trust Christ!  Changing lives is his passion and prayer!  Mark is also passionate about helping fathers and mothers raise children who will embrace Jesus Christ and become committed disciples of Christ.

Mark has been married for 31 years and is the father of four children; three of whom are now married. He is the proud grandfather of four grandchildren! He lives in the city of Eagan, Minnesota with his wife, Kathy. Mark serves on the board of Great Commission Latin America and Great CommissionChurches and is very involved in this movement of churches.  Mark also oversees our Rock Berlin churchin Germany.  Mark is currently a pastor at The Rock Church in Minneapolis, MN where he serves alongside his children and their spouses.

[AgathaL'Orange]

All I can see is "make Christ attractive".  Sigh.  That used to drive me nuts!  Jesus does not need any PR campaign.  He would like us to be honest, loving, and full of integrity so that we don't inadvertently make Christ unattractive.  The message of Christ is beautiful. Sometimes his followers (myself included) are not.

[Janet Easson Martin]

Very much agree, Agatha.

[Linda]

Excellent point, Agatha.

His mission is to make Christ attractive to the world so that the Christian would want to love and follow Christ and so that the non-Christian would want to know and trust Christ!

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions,he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Christ is attractive because of who He is and what He did. No human being could possibly make Christ more attractive.

[blonde]

Mark Darling was coached by Tom Jollie at Padilla Speer and Beardsley Public Relations to make church a "cool' place. It is sad that Mark Darling feels he needed to hide behind city-wide fliers and mailers to make Jesus cook in West and East Bloomington, Minnesota.

May I ask, Linda, how did you ever in the first place go to ECC?  Was it a flier in the mailbox that was sent or a phone call?

-blonde

[musterion]

His mission is to make Christ attractive to the world so that the Christian would want to love and follow Christ and so that the non-Christian would want to know and trust Christ!

Ineffectual and wrong-headed at best...heretical if not blasphemous at worst in that it is disobedient and ignorant of the Scripture. Christ Himself said the world hated Him and belongs (for now) to Satan. Exactly what marketing tool will they use to do for Christ what neither Father nor Son could not do for Him (i.e., make the world love Him)?

[musterion]

My wife recalls Mark Darling clearly as she was involved with GCM before I was...I think I recall hearing him speak one time and the only word that comes to my memory is 'frenetic' (my wife says this is an apt description of his style). She also confirmed to me that even back then - 20 years ago - he was heavily into marketing Christ and, apparently, nothing has changed.

Our question - is he or his church still GCM, or is he on his own now?

[Linda]

blonde, I am sorry to say that the cleverly designed postcards we received in the mail were our first "taste" of ECC. We were looking for a new church (because our denomination had decided to take non-pro-life stands on issues and those were being taught to our children via their Sunday School teacher) and as we were looking we remembered the postcards.

In addition to the postcards, and probably more persuasive, we also had become close friends with many ECC families through our homeschool co-op (the one I now direct that had the mass exodus of ECC pastors & families when Terry blogged about our departure from ECC). It was a natural move to go where we already knew people.

I must say that the postcards, while very well executed, were a bit off-putting. The classic one about ECC being a church with "Sax Appeal" (which they always claimed was the one that attracted the most new visitors, thus perpetuating the idea that the end justifies the means), I found tasteless and slightly worldly (just the idea that a church would market itself that way), but then we met all these nice families and thought, "Well, this place must not be as "slick" and worldly as they are trying to present themselves."

Looking back, for a group that tried to present themselves as "anti-slander" and "pro-unity", the postcards were insulting to every other church in the city. The gist of the messages were, "Come to our church, we have better music," "Come to our church, your church is boring," "Come to our church, we talk about relevant topics and don't do boring liturgy," "Come to our church, you don't have to dress up in uncomfortable clothes."

If I had thought about the message of the postcards for more than 30 seconds, the sectarian and divisive (to the body/bride of Christ) nature of this church would have been obvious. The mailers were offensive to many of our Christian friends in other churches and did a disservice to the Bride of Christ. Talk about slander!

[Linda]

musterion,

Mark is the pastor at The Rock in Minneapolis which is technically/legally an ECC church. He also sits on the national board of Great Commission Churches.

For whatever reason, Mark is a captivating and charismatic speaker. At least, I found him that way. Now that I know more, I have trouble listening, but he can capture an audience.

[BTDT]

While I can't promote or defend GC's "marketing efforts" over the years, I can inject a little perspective.  Back in the 80s and 90s, "marketing" your church or denomination was fairly widespread in evangelical American churches.  Even the Quakers were doing cold-calling to get people in their doors, for goodness' sake! 

I agree that God doesn't need our slick PR, and He definitely doesn't need us "playing Holy Spirit".  I just wanted to point out that it wasn't just a GC thing, although they certainly put their own spin on it.